Animation Is the Future of Math Education by Samien

Animation Is the Future of Math Education by Samien - April 2023 Scholarship Essay

While working as a teacher’s assistant for an Arabic class, a sixth grader was challenging his peers, asking what the sine of 90º was, just as a memorized fact.

"Do you know why it's one?" I asked. He shrugged, so I grabbed a pencil and held it sideways and told him to imagine a circle on the wall, and that the pencil was one unit long. I explained that the pencil was going to rotate 90º counterclockwise around one end. I then asked, "If the pencil is one unit long, how high is the top of the pencil from its other end?”

His eyes brightened. I saw the light bulb go off in his head. I live for that.

Math should be intuitive. It doesn't always need to be muddied up by numbers. Many people are afraid of math because of the way they were taught.

Mathematics has always been an interest of mine, and it took me a while to realize that not everybody finds it as intuitive as I do, and that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with being good at math by any means. So many of my friends are simply afraid of math. Helping classmates understand things throughout the years has taught me why: not because they’re “bad” at it, but rather the concepts just never “clicked” for them– usually because the way something was taught at school was not very clear to them. Because I love math, I try to obtain a deep, comprehensive understanding of everything we learn in school, but somebody discouraged from fully understanding from an early age may not put in the effort, simply because they are not interested.

One thing I’ve learned from self-teaching various bits of information and skills just by reading and experimenting is that simplicity is the key to an effective explanation. My few random experiences have taught me to break down complex concepts into simpler, easy-to-digest ideas. This makes it easier for me to learn and teach others. When helping friends with math, I try to give a completely different way to approach a topic, and then connect it to the “proper” way once they build an adequate understanding. This approach has helped peers and some underclassmen grasp concepts for both physics and mathematics. In fact, I found my methods so successful I began tutoring high schoolers for math earlier last year. The basic idea is that people learn more effectively visually than with only words and numbers.

Last spring, I began using Grant Sanderson’s python library, Manim, to create simple animations explaining certain math topics for visual learners. Manim is a library which uses just code, simple code at that, to create beautiful, simple, and smooth animations. Manim has a bit of a learning curve, so each video takes a long time for me to make, but every time I make an animation, I have friends telling me that my visuals helped them understand something that previously, to them, made no sense. I had initially planned on making an entire Calculus 1 and 2 course on youtube for free using only visuals, and simply using numbers and notation as a supplement, but school and other higher priority commitments have kept me busy from putting in the time necessary to consistently make high quality, effective, informative materials. If I had unlimited time, I would attempt to share everything I know about math and physics through voice-overed animations, and then spend more time and money to learn more so I can further spread the beauty of math. It’s quite a simple goal, but if I could dedicate an entire lifetime to making tutorial content, perhaps with help from others, I think I could make change in the world.

I could collaborate with professors and create supplementary materials and resources for students, or I could help a research group express ideas to a wider audience. I could offer alternative explanations to well-established ones just to supplement and solidify understanding in various topics. For example, in my precalculus class, my classmates and I were both struggling trying to grasp exactly what the trigonometric functions meant in relation to the unit circle and why they are graphed as waves. To clarify my own understanding, I created several animations showing exactly where the derivations for the sine and cosine functions come from and how exactly they relate to both circles and triangles. I approached the topic from a completely different perspective from the way I learned at school, because I explained it in a way that made perfect sense to me, and that happened to be effective for several other students. I made similar animated infographics regarding parametric functions, series and sequences, and the limit definition of a derivative for my calculus class, too. Whatever it is, this animation style has such broad applications that it can benefit anyone.

I believe animation is the future of education, and this is something I want to work on as I take advanced math classes, both requirements, and electives. I want to make higher levels of math accessible to everyone. My goal is to change the way math is taught, similar to how Sanderson does it, except instead of focusing on niche topics that require prior interest, I want to give those not interested in math a chance to understand it intuitively.